With Ranked Season 2 kicking off today and running until the 1st of June, it's time to jump back into the mode Dirty Bomb was built for - Hardcore 5v5 Stopwatch matches with friendly fire and team collision enabled.

This time around, you'll find even more rewards than skilling up and proving your worth...

Exclusive Ranked Cases

Get new, Limited Edition Loadout Cards by playing in Ranked Season 2.

Each Season 2 Ranked Case contains one random Loadout Card with an exclusive skin for a Merc and their weapons, available only during this season.

Want to strike fear into the hearts of the unwashed masses in pubs? They're not easy to get, but these skins are all about prestige.

Ranked Points

Earn Ranked Points to buy Ranked Season 2 Cases for 1000 points each.

You can get your hands on Ranked points in three ways:

1) Log in Now

To celebrate the beginning of the season, log in within the next four weeks for 500 bonus Ranked Points to get you on your way!

2) Play in Ranked Matches

Earn points for every match you play. The better your team does, the more points you'll earn as you work through the season.

Team Result

Win

Draw

Loss

Points Earned

50

30

10

3) Placement

When Season 2 ends, you'll earn points for the highest Rank you've achieved through the Season.

These range from 100 points for Bronze Recruit, to 4500 for Elite Operative. All possible rewards can be found in the 'Ranked' tab in your Profile.

When the Season ends, you'll have a week to spend any remaining points on Ranked Season 2 Cases. After that, any points you have left will carry over into the next season.

Ranked Case Drops

Finally, luck could shine upon you. Every time a case drops at the end of a Ranked match, there's a 2% chance it could be a Ranked Case.

Why Ranked?

Competitive play is at the heart of Dirty Bomb.

The satisfaction of improving your twitch skills and tactics, let alone working your team into a finely-tuned killing machine, is tangible.

On top of that, Ranked games are matchmade and give you the opportunity to group up with a friend or four for a full team. Add in new, exclusive content, and this is the perfect time to get your hands dirty.

Where Do I Sign Up?

To get a head start on the Season, hit 'Ranked Match' in the Play menu. Remember, you have to be at Level 7 or higher to get stuck in.

When you enter the new Season, you'll battle through ten placement matches to determine your starting Rank.

Your placement is affected by where you ended up in Season 1, but if you're fresh to Ranked these ten games will be the proverbial sorting hat for your starting position.

What Do I Get?

As well as earning Ranked Points for exclusive Cases, you'll get a 50% Credit Bonus that's applied to your Credit total at the end of every match.

On top of that, you'll be rewarded an exclusive Season 2 Trinket for the highest Rank you attain during the Season when it wraps up. Moving down a Rank won't cost you the higher Rank Trinket, so don't be afraid to fight your way back to the top!

What Else Has Changed?

A lot went wrong during Ranked Season 1.

Merging parts of our work-in-progress Casual Matchmaking system with Ranked caused a number of critical issues that took us time to resolve.

We've learned a lot from Season 1, and with this new Season we'll be doing our best to make Ranked Mode the perfect playground for competitive types. Along with fixing these issues, we've made some key changes:

Region Based Search Times/Limits - We're introducing more relaxed searching rules in the lower population regions to help them find games more quickly. These values have been tuned based on Season 1 data and will be monitored and tweaked going forward.

Faster Rank Changes - We'll be speeding up how quickly you Rank up/down in Season 2 by approximately 20-50%, depending on Win/Loss Ratios.

Factoring in Personal Performance - While your team winning or losing will always determine whether you gain or lose Ranks, we will be factoring in personal performance when we calculate how much you gain or lose after each match.

Reduced Credit Rate - Because of the Ranked-exclusive rewards now in the mode, we've reduced the Credit earning bonus to 1.5x the base rate (from 2.0x)

Alright, time to prove your mettle - Get in there and start raising your Rank!

Other Changes

Gameplay

Added a 'Crosshair Dot When Sighted' option which keeps the static 'dot' portion of the crosshair visible when ironsighted or scoped

Updated existing Crosshairs to always be an even number of pixels tall/wide, perfectly centering them on screen at all times

A future update will be expanding Crosshair options further

Audio

Added completely new audio for the DE .50 pistol (for details check out this dev update)

User Interface

Added a Steam Review popup, to occasionally guide experienced players towards the Steam review section if they decide to

Steam reviews really help us to promote Dirty Bomb. As we work towards publishing the game ourselves and scaling up the development team, every review helps us to reach a wider audience!

Updated the Feedback prompt on Exit so it will only ask for feedback once a week at most

Notable Bug Fixes

Fixed bug where the indirect flash effect from Concussion Grenades persisted for too long